Monday, October 10, 2011

What do we want?!!! (We’re not gonna tell!!!) When do we want it?!!! (Now!!!)

This just in: we now know why it is all of these alienated twentysomethings who are apparently economically comfortable enough to take a week or more off are Occupying our cities! We now go to Matt Labash at the Weekly Standard, who has finally gotten to the bottom of this spreading national tantrum:
They are gathering, they say, to “express a feeling of mass injustice” on behalf of “all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world.” They are against corporations, which have not only taken your houses “through an illegal foreclosure process” and taken “bailouts from taxpayers with impunity,” but also “perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation.”  
Corporations have additionally poisoned the food supply through negligence, profited off the torture of animals, held students hostage with college-loan debts, sold our privacy as a commodity, used the military to prevent freedom of the press, outsourced labor, blocked alternative sources of energy, covered up oil spills, kept people misinformed by controlling the media, created weapons of mass destruction to get government contracts, and perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad while participating in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.  
My recounting, mind you, does not duplicate their entire list. And even if it did, their entire list keeps its options open with a footnote specifying that “these grievances are not all-inclusive.” So what do they want? Besides, seemingly, to complain a lot about corporations, the very entities that provide so many of the jobs that our economy is sorely in need of? What are they advocating, besides their right to assemble publicly for the purposes of bucket-drumming and eating vegan quiche in the free chow line? Well, according to another posting on OWS’s website, they want a universal single-payer health care system, a guaranteed living wage regardless of employment, free college education, one trillion dollars in infrastructure improvement, to bring the fossil-fuel economy to an end, to outlaw all credit-reporting agencies, and to see immediate across-the-board debt forgiveness for all. This is just a partial list, but they’re also going to be needing unlimited open-borders migration, too, since “these demands will create so many jobs, it will be completely impossible to fill them without an open borders policy.”
Glad we got that cleared up. Now we we know their reasons for trashing up the city streets and parks and defecating on cars. But OWS's website does not include the agenda of a protester named "Amy," who is seeking "the very abolition of gender." Labash met "her" on the way to the "women's" room.

So now that we know ... uh oh. Hold on. No, it turns out that all of these grievances listed above were just some individual contributor who posted it on OWS's website that are being “hyped by irresponsible news/commentary agencies like Fox News.” There is, says OWS, "NO official list of demands.”

Well, shoot. And we thought we had that figured out.

But this will not stop us, folks. We will find out exactly what this whole thing is about. As soon as they do.

5 comments:

One Brow said...

Nice to see you approve of the coverage of the mainstream media.

http://freethoughtblogs.com/almostdiamonds/2011/10/10/understanding-occupy-wall-street/

Martin Cothran said...

The Weekly Standard is the mainstream media?

Singring said...

Come senators congressmen,
please heed the call,
don't stand in the doorway, don't block up the hall.

The times they are a-changin', Martin. Of course there are those like you or British Prime Minister Cameron who, from the comfort of their homes and palaces, pretend they 'can't figure out what it's about'. I don't think I need to give you the advice that ignoring a problem or pretending it doesn't even exist will not make it go away - simply because you already are commited to doing so already.

I should think that the fact that and others on your side of the issue haven't or don't want to learn this most important issue from history quite clearly illustrates where your true interests lie.

Lee said...

So what is this new protest calling itself? Anarchists for Big Government?

Lee said...

I've always liked Matt Labash, not quite a P.J. O'Rourke, but with better basic journalism skills.

> Well, according to another posting on OWS’s website, they want a universal single-payer health care system, a guaranteed living wage regardless of employment...

I might want that too, Martin. Do you have the list handy? I mean, do you have the list that says whether I'll be one of the ones receiving it? Or one of the ones paying for it? If I'm on the first list, then I'm in! If I'm on the second list, can we just move on, please?

> “bailouts from taxpayers with impunity,”

> and to see immediate across-the-board debt forgiveness for all.

But what's the difference between a guaranteed income/debt forgiveness and a bailout? Is the only thing wrong with bailouts the person who receives one?

And after the debt forgiveness... what happens the next time someone needs to borrow money? Who's going to be dumb enough to lend it?